Morning from Hakuba and it's snowy news I bring this morning. Around 20cm or so of snow at village/base level this morning with resorts around Hakuba and Otari reportiung up to 30cm on the slopes. Hearing reports of up to 40cm.

Conditions on slopes should be excellent this morning. It's actually a relatively mild morning here with the temperature around 0 degrees at base at the moment. Usagidaira at 1400m is reporting a temperature of -7 degrees and a NW wind of about 3.5m/s.

The wind has been affecting lifts early on. Seems some lifts on 47 affected. Over at Cortina the Number 4 and 5 lifts are closed today due to avalanche danger along with some of the popular courses over there.

Snow is still falling on the mountain though lower down in the village there's even a few small areas of blue sky from time to time, though still mostly cloud cover. The forecast is for snow for most of the day in the region, followed by likely clearer conditions tomorrow morning.

[I want to believe the '250cm' of new snow reported by Hakuba Goryu on upper slopes this morning, but I reckon it's more like 25cm. Having said that, 250cm of snow overnight is a scary prospect, if not somewhat exciting. Can you just imagine that. We have been known to post typos from time to time - I remember once Hakuba 47 was on 4700cm snow depth once a few years back acccoring to our report. We fixed that up of course as soon as about 20 people mailed us to let us know!]

Back to serious hat...

So lots of new snow and enough great conditions on the courses of the resorts to enjoy. With heightened avalanche riskes out of bounds it is highly recommended that people stay within the boundaries. Going outside is just asking for trouble. Nobody wants to hear about people being buried or injured on the slopes... Have fun but take care.